Tempest
by Androktones
Summary: She wants to yield to him, to the force he keeps leashed for fear...She needs to cast down the mantle of her name, of her office, to cede the consequences and the choices and the -weight- of it all, here, with him. She knows that he does, too. Behind the "fade to black", the Inquisitor and the Commander of her forces give in to what lies between them for the first time. One Shot.


A/N: So, I'm posting my first story in...seven years or so. My older stuff (really old and really bad, generally) can be found under my old pen name, Rynn Abhorsen. In any case, here is another desk story. It seems to me that Trevelyan, particularly a warrior or rogue, would most likely be very inexperienced in the bedroom, due to her noble upbringing. It sort of bugs me that we don't get any sort of discussion of it within the game (remember the "licking a lamppost conversation?). I hope you enjoy!

"Tempest"

"Cullen, do you really have to ask?"

He smiles softly. "I suppose not."

She leans back against the desk, trying to invite him closer, to kiss her, praying that he will and—

_Well, shit_, the Inquisitor thinks in the moment that the bottle teeters on the edge of the desk before it falls, shattering into a hundred iridescent pieces on the flagstones. She looks at Cullen, his honey-colored eyes going dark, flaring into amber as he uses one powerful but controlled swipe of his arm to send the carefully stacked reams of papers – troop movements, maps, letters – onto the floor as well.

And it seems like only a moment before he is in top of her, his cloak falling around them and his mouth on hers, insistent and demanding. She grips the contours of his biceps to anchor herself as he kisses her, again and again and again. He isn't using his tongue, she notes hazily, just pressing his lips to hers, hard, and firm, not taking but asking, and he slips one of his hands between the back of her skull and the desk and twines his fingers in her hair, drawing her up and closer to him, holding her there against his mouth. She sighs out _oh Cullen_ and he, ever the tactician, presses the advantage, sweeping his tongue between her parted lips and on instinct she matches his move and he exhales her name in pleasure. Her head is spinning.

She doesn't know what she's doing, not really, but she knows her blood is hot and thrumming through her veins and she thinks she might die if he stops kissing her now so she brings her hands up to the silver chains that link his cloak to his pauldrons. She fumbles with them for only a bit before the heavy fabric falls away onto the floor. He is still kissing her _thank the Maker_, lips moving from her mouth to her ear. His breath fans hot over her already heated skin and she shivers as he draws the lobe of her ear between his teeth. Cullen kisses the column of her throat, bared to his gaze as the hand still nested in her hair gives a firm tug and tilts her head back. She closes her eyes at the sensation of his stubble on her skin, at the hot, wet heat of his mouth. And then his other hand, the one not cradling her head, wraps around her waist and he pulls her bodily to the very edge of the desk so he stands between her parted thighs and she can feel the rigid length of him pressing against her lower belly and _oh Maker…_

"You should know," she says, as she locks her ankles behind him and kisses the underside of his jaw, lips rasping over the stubble, "that I have never done this before."

He stiffens, _shit_ she thinks, and meets her eyes. "Never?" he says, with his voice like honey and eyes unbelieving.

Her teeth worry the edge of her lower lip; _shouldn't have said anything_, she thinks. "Well, no. I mean, I understand the _mechanics_ obviously, but I am a Trevelyan, albeit the youngest of four daughters, and one with neither the looks nor the dowry to commend her -" she notes how his eyebrows lift at this – "you think I jest, but had you met Cosette, my eldest sister, you might find me a sight less appealing. She's gorgeous. After three weddings, Father hardly had the money to secure a husband for me. Mother always drove home that protecting one's virtue was of the utmost importance. Well that, closing rifts in the sky, and saving the world, of course."

His hands are resting on her shoulders, which she supposes is neutral territory, all things considered, but she doesn't unlock her ankles from around his waist. She won't allow his damnable gentlemanly manners to step between them. He swallows once, hard, and she watches as his Adam's apple bobs in the column of his throat. Finally he meets her eyes again.

"And you want to do this, here, with _me_?"

She hates the emphasis he places on the last word and kisses him again, where the scar on his lip goes white when he smiles, before placing her lips to his ear.

"I want you, Cullen. _Most _desperately."

A shiver runs the length of his frame, tip to toe, and he shudders out, "sweet Maker."

If Cullen Stanton Rutherford did not believe in the Maker before, he is certainly a believer now, as divine intervention is about the only reason he can come up with to explain his present circumstances. She, the most beautiful woman in all of Thedas, the Herald of Andraste herself, is on his desk with her legs around his waist and she is saying to him (him!) that she wants him to be her first (_and only_ he thinks to himself, a promise). A farm boy from southern Fereldan, a Templar without an order, a man wracked by lyrium withdrawal…

She licks her bottom lip, gazing at him from beneath her lashes, and says, "Well?"

And a fool, he thinks, for not answering that question already.

He drops his hands from her shoulders to her waist, presses her against him, kisses her, hard, and she goes liquid, throwing her arms around his neck as she sags against him.

"You must," he begins, and kisses her, "tell me," another kiss, "if I do anything," and a slower one here to apologize for departing for so long, "you don't like."

She smiles, sunbright, "I want everything. All of it. _You._"

He groans, "Maker, the things I am going to do to you…"

At this he _feels_ rather than sees a shiver of excitement run through her and her eyes are almost black her pupils are so wide. "Tell me," she breathes, a flush creeping up from the neckline of her linen shirt.

_So the Herald likes her dirty talk_, he thinks and smiles, predatory as he slowly and deliberately takes off his gloves, watching how her eyes track the movement as he pulls at each fingertip, as he slips his hands free of the leather and flexes his fingers. "Well just to start, I am going to undress you, and kiss you everywhere. Then, I am going to make you _scream_."

And his mouth is on hers again, hot, open, plundering, his tongue stroking hers, pressing into her heat. His hands leave her waist to begin worrying at the buttons of her shirt, and she starts at the top as he starts at the bottom, both eager to extricate her from the garment. She keeps kissing him while he fumbles, fingers too large for the small fastenings. But then the fabric parts, and he curls his hands over the smooth skin of her shoulders as he slips the fabric off, kisses the dip between her collarbones, traces the column of her neck with his tongue, grazes it with his teeth. She hums in contentment, eyes closed, before reaching for his breastplate.

"Off," she says, and he's never found an order more agreeable. The metal hits the stones with a clang, and he looks down for a moment, appraising it for dents (_Templar training dies hard_, he thinks balefully) and while his eyes are downcast he sees the linen strip which forms her breastband flutter softly to lie beside the platemail on the floor.

He looks up and she is there, naked from the waist up, glorious, golden in the flickering light from the braziers, smiling.

_Sweet Andraste…_

Cullen wraps an arm around her shoulders and the other grips her hip as he drops his head to her chest, kissing her first in the hollow between her breasts, and then he exhales on the tip of each. He smiles as her nipples pebble in reaction, at the way her fingers tighten against his shoulders. The hand at her hip travels up the curve of her waist and past it, and he kisses her soundly as his thumb presses against the tip of her breast, as his fingers curve around her ribs. She jumps when he tweaks a nipple between his thumb and forefinger, her legs tightening around him, pulling him closer.

"Oh" he murmurs against her neck, against her breast, "do you even know what you do to me?"

"Mmm," she replies, hands skating up under his shirt, her short, blunted nails running over the skin of his back, across his shoulders. "Tell me."

"You make me so hard and so distracted," he says, pulling a nipple between his lips as she gasps, higher in tone this time, "that more than once I've had to lock these doors and deal with the problem myself."

"Ah," she gasps, "next time - _Oh Cullen_ \- come find me." His left hand - large, calloused - kneads the swell of her breast as the right anchors her to him, holding her against his mouth as he laves the other breast with his tongue. She moans, and he feels his cock, hard and aching, twitch within the confines of his breeches. Breaking away for a moment, Cullen grabs the hem of his shirt and pulls it over his head in one motion, desperate to feel her against him. Her eyes catch the movement, and her hands skim over the planes of his chest, drifting down to where the coarse hair narrows and disappears into the waist of his trousers, the latter impressively tented now by the contours of his cock. She makes to undo the lacings and he plucks her hand away, places it flat on the desktop.

"Do not move your hands from that spot," he says.

She smiles cheekily. "Or what, you'll tie me up?"

He tweaks a breast, harder this time, and she gasps.

"Another time, perhaps," he replies, voice dark with promise. And he strips her of her shoes and trousers, leaving just her small clothes on. Cullen drops to his knees and kisses the inside of her thigh, just above her knee.

"I've thought about bending you over the table in the War Room," he whispers, kissing a couple inches higher. "Of pressing you against the door" and another kiss, higher yet, which earns him a breathy "oh yes."

"Of hilting myself in you in the carriage to Orlais" and he nips at the soft skin of her inner thigh before soothing it with his tongue.

"I want you to fuck me in a tent in the Emerald Graves. I want…" she breathes, and he sees that her fingers have curled over the edges of the desk, knuckles gone white.

He is at the apex of her thighs now, and he places his mouth against the damp cotton of her smalls, breathing hotly, and a shiver and a moan escapes her. "Tell me," he says, and presses against her with two fingers through the fabric.

"At the ball," she moans, "I wanted to kiss you in front of all those Orlesian harlots. I wanted to drag you off into some dark corner and take you in my mouth and see you come undone. I wanted to walk back in there knowing that only _I _get to have you that way."

"Yes," he says as he draws the last garment shielding her from his eyes down her legs, throws it over his shoulder. He presses a kiss to her inner thigh, parts her, glistening, with his fingers and finally, _finally_ he drags the flat of his tongue from the bottom of her to the top, pressing against the bundled nerves there.

"Maker!" she gasps and he smiles against her skin. Using one arm to hold her hips down to the desk and against his mouth, he begins his quest for her pleasure in earnest. He swirls his tongue against her, dives inside her, and against her skin he writes out the words he cannot yet say; _I love you. I need you. Please, always come back to me_. She is sinuous against him, keening _oh Cullen yes oh please please Cullen please yes_ and he draws himself away from her wet heat just long enough to say "you can move your hands," before diving back into the center of the woman who is rapidly becoming his world. As he drags his tongue against her he sees how she palms a breast with one hand and presses the other, a balled up fist, into her mouth.

He scrapes his teeth against her and she yelps. "No," he says, commanding, "I want to hear you."

And she drops the offending hand away from her mouth, her eyes dark and bright as he draws two fingers through her folds teasingly, once, twice, before bringing them to his lips, drawing the tips into his mouth. She watches, rapt, flushed, as he takes those digits, glistening and wet, back to where he knows she craves his touch, where the combined slickness of her arousal and his saliva allows him to glide from the top, where he circles and she gasps, down to her entrance. He pauses there, and she looks down at him where he rests between her legs.

"Cullen," she says, "I want-"

He doesn't let her finish. She moans and tangles a hand in his hair as he presses those two fingers inside her and _up_ while he closes his lips around her. With his hand and his tongue working in concert, it takes a few moments before she comes apart, undone, shaking. His name is a chant on her lips as he strokes her through her climax, as she writhes around his fingers and his mouth. Afterwards, slowly, he withdraws from her, brushes his mouth and his hand against his shirt, reclaimed from the floor.

Now satisfied at her pleasure, Cullen picks his discarded cloak up off of the stones and wraps her in it. She is boneless, languid, and tremors are running up and down her legs, but he sees the question in her eyes as she tangles her fingers in the fur.

"There is broken glass all over the floor," he murmurs, smiling, "and as many fantasies as I have about enjoying each other on the desk, I think the bed might better serve my purpose."

"At least this time," she replies, though she squeaks as he tosses her over his shoulder and strides to the ladder.

As he climbs, she runs her nails across his lower back where she dangles, musing, "You know, I could get used to this. The view of your ass while you carry me is simply _divine_. That nobleman from the ball would _die_."

Cullen pulls himself up and off the ladder, and sets her on her feet, hands lingering at her waist. She is proud to say she wobbles only a little bit as he walks over to his bed, where he sits and begins to unlace his boots. The tenor of the moment has shifted, she notes, turned somehow in between the desk and here, become weightier as the frenzy of their actions in the study has waned. She is probably the only other person who has been in this part of his tower, she thinks, though she isn't foolish enough to believe she is the only woman to have ever seen him in this way, shirtless, desirous. She watches him, standing wrapped in his cloak at the threshold and marvels at the way the shadows ripple across the skin of his arms as he bends to ease off a shoe, at how the scars that crisscross his back turn silver and shimmering in the moonlight.

"Cullen," she says, and lets his cloak drop from her shoulders, though she holds it up enough to cover her breasts, relishing the brush of the fur against her bare skin. He is watching her, his hair mussed, naked feet planted on the floor and hands resting on the tops of his thighs. She steps towards him, smoothly, more confidently than she feels, letting the cloak drop another few inches. His eyes track the movement, and she sees his hands clench slightly at the fabric of his trousers.

Another step, another few inches, and once again, until she is standing before him, holding his cloak loosely in her lowered hands, letting the moonlight and the weight of his eyes travel over the expanse of her skin.

"Touch me," she whispers, suddenly frightened at the naked want and the feeling behind it she can see in his eyes, "tell me what to do. How to touch you…"

He stands then, and he gently places his hands over hers, loosens her fingers, and the cloak again drops to the floor. Cullen wraps an arm around her waist, and with the other he brushes a few locks of hair away from her face, smoothing his thumb across her cheekbone as he does.

"Touch me however you like," he replies, voice low as he brings the hand at her cheek to cradle the back of her head, to press her forehead against his, to make it so they breathe the same air. "Just stay."

"Always," she breathes before kissing him. She rests her hands above his narrow hips, curls her fingers there as her mouth parts to his, as the fingers of his left hand tangle in her hair, and his right pulls fast, presses her tighter against his body. She traces the rise of his hipbones where they lie above his trousers, lets her nails scrape lightly across them before she draws back from him, just enough to maneuver, to bring her arms up to drape around his shoulders. Kissing the corner of his mouth, she trails down the column of his neck, lingering where his pulse jumps beneath her lips. She kisses the divot between his collarbones, tastes the scar that bisects his pectorals. The rasp of his chest hair is new, but not unwelcome, and she presses her mouth against the place where his heart lies. She dares to move a bit faster as she returns to his lips, sweeps her tongue into the heat, breathes out between kisses how much she wants him.

"I want your hands all over me, Cullen. I need your lips against mine, against my body, how could you be so wicked as to be so _good_…how am I ever supposed to go on campaign again? Listen to Leliana or Josephine in the War Room?"

Then her fingers are dipping low below the waistband of his trousers, and she sees the tendons in his neck jump as she brushes him, once, twice, as teasingly as she knows how. Cullen hisses between clenched teeth as she takes the edges of the garment in her hands and begins to peel it from his body, teasing the fabric away from his hips and _down_ and she doesn't know it but she guesses from the way his body goes rigid that the slide of the cotton against his need is almost _painful_.

And then the fabric puddles on the floor and Cullen, _all of Cullen_, is bared to her gaze. The calves strong from days of riding, the muscular thighs, the line of hair that leads her eyes from his muscled stomach down to…_oh_. And then her bravado flees, but she _wants_ enough and _needs _enough and _aches_ enough that she doesn't shy, and his eyes are on her, waiting, not pushing, as she softly, experimentally wraps a hand around his length. The feel of his skin there is…softer, somehow, than she expected, though steel-hard, too, and when she draws her hand tight around him, dragging from base to tip, his eyes close partway and he reaches out to the bedpost to steady himself.

"Sweet Maker."

She smiles and does it again. He is hot and hard in her hand, and she knows she's doing at least moderately well from the novels she has borrowed from Cassandra and her sisters' talk, which was much more practical in nature than her mother's. _Lie back and think of Ostwick_ hardly prepared her for a moment like this, particularly when he groans out her name and heat flares low and strong in her belly.

And she is so focused on her task, on the slide of her hand against him, on the way that the wetness beading at the tip of his cock allows her to move faster and smoother, that she does not notice how she has been subtly maneuvered against the edge of the mattress until the backs of her knees bump against it. He smiles quick as a spark before the weight of his body tilts her and she falls back against the coverlet.

He is on top of her again, both of her hands somehow having ended up over her head and caught between one of his and she thinks to complain that she was _not finished_ before he kisses her long and slow and deep and she can't think of her own _name_ anymore, to say nothing of a complaint. And those clever fingers of his are against her again, plying her skin and pressing _just there_ until she is squeezing her thighs against him, desperate for more.

He brings her to her peak, slower this time, his mouth at her breast and his hand between her legs, stroking and teasing until she cries out his name again and again, trembling with the need for him.

His body rests over hers, where he has propped himself up on his forearms. There is such _power_ in Cullen, she thinks as he seals his mouth over the place where her shoulder meets her neck, in how he throws her over his shoulder like she is just shy of weightless, in how he can lift her and turn her in his _exceedingly skilled_ hands, in how he makes her body come alight and her lips stop forming words. She wants that, to yield to him, to the force he keeps leashed for fear. She needs him to forget to be afraid…of himself, of hurting her, of pushing her too far or too fast. She needs to cast down the mantle of her name, of her office, to cede the consequences and the choices and the _weight_ of it all, here, with him. She knows that he does, too.

"Please, Cullen. I want you inside me."

His mouth claims hers as he nudges her knees apart, uses one hand to adjust himself until she feels the heat and the hardness of him so close to where she needs him most. He parts her with his fingers and, with the same hand, now pumps against his length twice, coating himself with her arousal before she is pinioned to the mattress by his tortuously slow entrance.

His hands press hers into the blankets and she is so focused on the slide of him that she registers only hazily at first that he is trembling. His eyes are closed and sweat beads on his forehead and she knows he is trying to stay in control, trying not to hurt her, but she craves the full force of him, the power of his body and she squeezes his hand hard enough that he stills, and opens his eyes to meet her gaze as she, smiling, says, "I won't break. I _need_ you."

And then she wraps her legs around his waist and tightens, says "Harder, Cullen" and his thinly-held control snaps.

For the briefest moment Cullen isn't sure he's heard her right, but he is quickly convinced by the glint in her eyes and the beautiful way she quirks up the corner of her mouth the same way she did on the battlements when he lost control and kissed her, _hard_. It would be her, he thinks, who wants it this way; she who bears the Mark and the world; she who has no use for his misplaced chivalry, she who desires him and _only_ him and _all of him_ (Maker, it spends his head spinning if he thinks about _that_ too long).

He's never been one to keep a lady waiting.

Cullen withdraws just long enough to see her furrow her brow, confused, before he drives back into her, hard enough that they slide up the mattress a bit and he briefly wonders if he's moved too fast, too forcefully, but she is suddenly _so wet_ around him and her hands fly up to grasp his shoulders and she gasps, "again".

Maker, he never knew he could love a woman the way he loves her.

And he does it again, and again, and faster and the bed is shaking and they are a tempest as her heels dig into the small of his back and her nails rake down the skin of his shoulders as she trembles and her body, the sound of her breathy gasps, his name on her lips is more sacred than any prayer and he is making love to a goddess, a force of nature, a star made flesh as the wet heat of her calls to him, as she keens.

Then he has an arm wrapped around her waist and he drags her over him, so the starlight frames her body against the night sky and he uses his hands to guide her hips against him, once, twice, before she takes up the rhythm herself, driving him up and into her. She presses her fingertips against her own breast, uses the other to guide his hand to where their bodies meet and she breathes, "Touch me. Tell me."

_I love you. I need you. Please, always come back to me. _

He curls one hand around her hip, and with the other he seeks out the place at the juncture of her thighs that he knows will undo her. He whispers in a half-moan, "You are so beautiful. So wet. So tight. Sweet Maker…"

"Oh _Cullen_, don't stop."

He presses against her just right then, and she shatters, pressing trembling hands against his chest as she quakes, as she ripples around him. He is close now, the snap of his hips keeping a less sure pace, and she keeps up the movement as best she can, drained as she is, her hair loose and sweat beading between her breasts.

She leans down to whisper something in his ear, to brush her breasts against his chest, and the way her lower body tightens around his cock to keep stable as she moves brings his end. If his hands on her hips are almost too hard as he comes, she doesn't seem to mind, sighing out in pleasure at the feel of his release within her. She writhes against him as he shudders through the waves, as if seeking to keep him there, as deep within her as she can manage, until his body goes limp, and she slowly climbs off to lie beside him. He turns and curls, tucking her within his limbs as he presses a lazy, open-mouthed kiss to her shoulder, to the back of her neck after he draws her hair away. She hums, sated, and then turns within his arms to meet his eyes.

"Thank you," she says, and he feels utterly bewildered. He has felt utterly bewildered before, and by her, too, but maybe it is the fact that blood is only partially returned to his brain that makes him say, "You're welcome. For what?"

She kisses him sweetly. "For that. For being free with me. For letting go." And then, as if it is the most uncomplicated thing in the world, "I love you."

He has enough blood yet to know his answer to that, of course, as he rolls his body over hers, presses her into the mattress once more, meets her eyes. "Say it again."

"I love you," she says, shyer this time, and he kisses her.

"Again."

She bites his lower lip and says smiling, "I think it's your turn."

He sits up, takes her hand and presses it to the place on his chest where his heart thunders, beats out her name. "I love you. I'm yours. For as long as you'll have me. Forever, if it works for you."

"Sounds perfect," she replies, kissing him. "Now, about the table in the War Room…"

-Fin-


End file.
